


Run, run, run.

by buckynatalia



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, F/M, On the Run, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5300459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckynatalia/pseuds/buckynatalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Romanova and Bucky Barnes steal a car and run, riding off into an unknown wasteland, hoping to survive the end of the world as they know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run, run, run.

My hands around the steering wheel, white-knuckled. Slender trees beckoning to the sky, asking, asking.

I was starting to remember things, driving over the decimated hills with their crumbling houses. Memories sluggish as pine sap, golden and hardened into amber. Brittle. A golden-haired boy with fists raised, laughing at me though he was the one with a blackened eye. An iron bridge stretching across a wide silver river. Automobiles and brandy on my tongue. Flickering lights. An icy crevasse, screaming until my voice went hoarse. 

A Russian passport with another man's name on it. The absence of a name, a hole in my brain. 

"James," the name rolled around sweetly in the mouth of a girl. Like lemon candy. Later, spat from crimson lips like a loose tooth on a bed of blood and saliva. 

Girl, cut from marble. I always thought that winter brought out the best in her. That was easy to see now, with the gray and dismal buildings cutting into the frozen earth, ice falling from the sky soft as feathers. I remembered a fairytale frosted in white, blood soaking into the ground at her feet. I remembered a seventeen-year-old girl with an old woman's glare. She, with the tousled red hair and a black coat that turned her into a storm cloud, a harpy. Creamy pale skin. The promise of knives in her sleeves. 

A dead buck at the side of the road, it's horns intricate and broken. It's insides flayed by scavengers. Already we've grown desperate. 

I drove past a thousand barns, many of them flattened. The broken promise of greasy fast food advertised on peeling billboards. The dead fields devoid of corn, some of them littered with bodies splayed out like birds, wings outstretched. The main highways were no doubt clogged. People trying to escape while the last of the gasoline drained from our reservoirs. The last exhaust poisoned the sky, like smoke signals, like a flag of surrender. 

The back roads were empty, and I had half a tank left.

The car was stolen. My car, now, glaringly pretentious and eco-friendly. A dull silver color with beige insides, soft seats covered in plastic. Mints in the glove compartment, a suit laid out in the backseat. Something for a funeral or a particularly unremarkable wedding. This car belonged to someone numb and likely already deceased. 

I always thought the apocalypse would be loud, fiery. A theatrical exhibition of humanity's decay. When it came, none of us were ready. 

A quiet sort of downfall. People rushing to evacuate, trampling. Ugly and weak. Smokestacks and crying children dragged by chapped hands.

I find Natasha in the front yard of a safe house.


End file.
